Series 10263

These records are housed in the Utah State Archives' permanent storage room.

Scope and Content

In December 1983 the National Reference Designs Study first envisioned the potential construction of a superconducting super collider. The idea was reviewed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and a site-selection process for the construction of the world's largest super collider was initiated in 1987. The design of a super collider allows for two proton beams to be aimed at one another. Moving at near the speed of light, the particles in these beams smash into one another and are broken down to the most basic subatomic particle units. In this way conditions that may have appeared moments after the Big Bang are replicated and scientists are able to learn about the basic forces governing the laws of physics.

Utah leaders saw the SSC as a potentially powerful means to spur social and economic growth in the Wasatch Front region, and determined that the state would make a formal proposal to the DOE for construction of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Utah's Great Basin Desert. The estimated construction cost of the SSC was projected at $600 million per year over a six or seven year period. Had it been built the SSC would have had a long-term construction for of 750 workers, and a peak construction force of approximately 4000. Upon completion the annual operating budget of the SSC would have totaled $270 million per year. The consulting firm of Dames and Moore was hired to conduct a site review and help draft the formal proposal that fit the site specific qualification criteria demanded by the official DOE Invitation for Site Proposals. Dames and Moore was assisted in the process by the Ralph M. Parsons Company, Roger Foott Associates, Inc., Bear West Consulting, the Wasatch Front Regional Council, and the Data Resources Section of the Utah Office of Planning and Budget.

SSC qualification criteria issued by the DOE reveal the massive energy and resource needs of the project. The design of the SSC called for a tube 10 feet in diameter to be buried 20 feet below the ground surface (to shield above ground monitoring areas from radiation). This tube would have run 52 miles in an oval raceway (with dimensions of 17.4 miles by 14.6 miles). The above ground campus facilities were to be connected to the underground areas. It was in the above ground areas that monitoring and study could take place. A DOE estimate of 4000 acres was needed for the facility (with additional rights to another 4000 to 5000 acres for future tunneling). The power and water demands for the SSC and its off-site support facilities would have been equivalent to a town of 30,000. Utility requirements for the SSC included:

- Two independent commercial electrical sources at minimum 138 Kv (preferably in the range of the 230 Kv to 500 Kv) with peak demand of 250 MW.

- Radioactive waste disposal for low-level equipment and decommissioning of accelerator at the end of SSC operation

Additionally the SSC would have demanded infrastructure for an operational staff of 3000 (2500 permanent personnel and 500 visiting personnel). With families, it was estimated that approximately 10,000 people would have been directly dependent on available SSC facilities and infrastructure.

Two initial reports were created by Dames and Moore in February and March of 1987 that laid out the specifications of the SSC, as well as an initial assessment of areas in Utah that could prove feasible for SSC construction. Based on these reports, two areas in the Great Basin Desert were chosen for a more thorough review and assessment process. Ultimately two separate multi-volume proposals were created for the sites in question. The first is entitled the "Cedar Mountains Siting Proposal" and focuses on a region 52 miles west of Salt Lake City, near Skull Valley. The second proposal is entitled the "Ripple Valley Siting Proposal" and focuses on an area 69 miles west of Salt Lake City (near the Knolls exit on Interstate 80). The reports generated for each site proposal focus on geology, local environment, public land availability, regional conditions, and available utilities and infrastructure. Each presents a formal offer by Utah to the DOE for construction rights to the SSC. This offer included access to public lands, utilities run to the SSC site at no charge, $230 million on SSC facilities (including a High Energy Research Institute with a $7.5 million annual budget), and support infrastructure in the form of roads, railroad sidings, and an aircraft landing strip. The formal siting reports were submitted to the DOE for review on September 02, 1987.

The records in this series were created by or at the request of the governor's Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) Task Force, which was staffed by the governor's science advisor and the Office of Planning and Budget. Records document meetings of the task force, and studies and draft proposals recommending that the United State Department of Energy select Utah as the site for constructing the super collider. The records also include task force meeting agenda, minutes, and handouts; draft site proposals for Cedar Mountains and Ripple Valley; site comparisons; progress reports; copies of governor press releases, news articles, Department of Energy questions and answers, and other community relations information; and correspondence.

Ultimately the DOE rejected the Utah proposal for the SSC, instead awarding the project to Texas in November 1988. Construction on the SSC (nicknamed "Desertron") began in 1991 near the central-Texas town of Waxahachie. Seventeen shafts were sunk and 14.6 miles of tunnel were bored (out of an estimated 54.1 miles needed) before claims of government mismanagement and sky-rocketing costs ended construction in 1993. By the time construction was halted the federal government had spent $2 billion dollars on the SSC (with an estimated price tag of $12 billion to successfully finish it). The massive costs of the project were primarily associated with the extreme difficulties encountered with tunneling through bedrock and creating viable infrastructure deep underground. Had the SSC project been completed, its two 20 TeV per proton energy beams would have made it the largest super collider on Earth (even larger than the Large Hadron Collider that was built near Geneva, Switzerland and became operation in 2009). The SSC site in Waxahachie was deeded to Ellis County, Texas after construction was halted, and was eventually sold in 2006 to a private company which began marketing it as a data center. The site was purchased in 2012 by chemical company, Magnablend.

Arrangement

Chronological by date.

Related Records

Superconducting Super Collider proposal from the Utah Energy Office, Series 353, contains copies of all the official reports and submitted proposals related to Utah's bid for the Superconducting Super Collider.

Special project files from the Department of Natural Resources. Geological Survey, Series 25708, contains information collected or created by the Geological Survey about special projects, including the Superconducting Super Collider.

Superconducting super collider records from the Economic Business Research, Series 83904, contains additional copies of the proposal reports found in this series along with other technical information on the Superconducting Super Collider.

Access Restrictions

This series is classified as Public.

Preferred Citation

Cite the Utah State Archives and Records Service, the creating agency name, the series title, and the series number.